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More than a year ago we started the Orchid Pavilion series to
differ-entiate our expanding list of literary titles. The reference is
to Wang Xizhi's Orchid Pavilion Preface,
penned with rats whiskers in 352 A.D. In the late spring of that
year Wang Xizhi invited 41 relatives and friends on an outing to Lan
Ting, the Orchid Pavilion, in the city of Shaoxing. By day's end, 25
scholars had composed 37 poems. Wang Xizhi took his brush and wrote on
the spot the greatest masterpiece of Chinese calligraphy, the Lan Ting
Xu or Orchid Pavilion Preface. Our
series now has its own
logo, which appears in the left hand corner above. |
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Cleaning House
Barry Kalb |
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A Small Place in the Desert
Christopher New |
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China Coast Trilogy
Christopher New |
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What to do
with SARS? We claim divine inter-vention. It arrived just in time for
Barry Kalb's mordantly funny
Cleaning House. Noah
Archer and the Archangel Wong are on a Godly mission and a gang of
lesbians are after the Pope. A new virus is loose and where else does
its trail lead but to Manila. |
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Christopher New's
A Small Place
in The Desert is another of Orchid Pavilion's new offerings
for 2003. Allusive and timely, New York Times bestselling
author Christopher New brings to North Africa the same historical
perspicacity his earlier novels bring to South Asia and to the China
Coast. |
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New's China Coast Trilogy
is
arguably the finest fictional writing about the British pre-sence on
the China coast. Said the South China Morning Post: 'more
memorable than Anthony Burgess's acclaimed Malayan Trilogy and
deserves comparison with the Raj Quartet of Paul Scott...a
genuine masterpiece.' |
